


every ten thousand nights

by tweedlebeebum



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Barebacking, Established Relationship, M/M, Modern Era, Porn with Feelings, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedlebeebum/pseuds/tweedlebeebum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s starting to forget the details of his face, having gone the last century without a reflection. Nick tries to describe it to him, and ends up doing much more in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every ten thousand nights

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to get something out of the fifty thousand things I've wanted to write for this fandom for ages, and thank you so much to Erin for helping make that happen with her constant encouragement and enthusiasm and general loveliness and support. The story's based on [this tumblr post](http://frankmorys.tumblr.com/post/58273325238/two-vampire-friends-lying-on-the-floor-getting), which goes:
>
>> two vampire friends lying on the floor getting drunk and describing eachother because they can’t use mirrors don’t even try to tell me that isn’t adorable
> 
> This was incredibly fun for me to write, and I hope you enjoy reading it!! :)))

It’s been a very, very long time since one of Harry’s Saturday nights hadn’t ended with him and Nick stumbling into whatever living space they were inhabiting together at whichever part of the world, blind drunk and sated from the fresh blood coursing through their veins. 

“Probably the sixties,” Harry thinks out loud, toeing off his shoes without unwrapping his arms from around Nick’s body, Nick’s back plastered against Harry’s front. Of course, this leads to their legs getting tangled together, and Nick yelps between his laughter as they both crash against the wall. 

“Bloody menace,” grumbles Nick, but he makes no move to remove Harry’s arms as he maneuvers them both around the tiny entrance hall to shut the door. “What’re you going on about the sixties?”

“The last time we stayed in on a weekend,” says Harry, trying to remember why they weren’t at a club or a rave. “Where were we then? Not England, surely.”

“San Francisco, I think,” says Nick, shaking his hair to remove some errant snowflakes. “But mind you I could be completely wrong. My faculties are shot. Drowning in sub-par but shockingly effective alcohol.”

“Me too,” agrees Harry, though he’s not sure what exactly he’s agreeing to. “I’m drunk. So so drunk. I think there was something else in the drinks.”

“I think so too,” says Nick, and Harry beams. “But let’s move this lovely chat into the drawing room, shall we?”

“Okay,” says Harry, and starts to shuffle them further into the flat. He should probably let Nick go, but Harry’s handsy when he’s drunk. Also, they’re vampires, so fuck safety, honestly. There are only two guaranteed ways of killing them that’s not a direct stake through the heart, and Harry’s pretty sure even his shameful levels of coordination isn’t enough to accidentally chop their heads off or simultaneously light them both on fire.

Well, more the former than the latter. Harry’s mostly sure that Nick’s forgiven him for nearly offing them both with that out-of-control grease fire. 

“Are you a crossbreed with a barnacle, Harold?” laughs Nick. “A monstrous creature who refuses to let go of anything it latches on to?”

This is a question that requires serious thought, and Harry deliberates on it as he unwraps his arms from Nick for less than an instant, turning on the dim, wavering light of the living room. They’ll need to replace that light bulb soon, he thinks, given that it takes almost ten seconds for the light to stop flickering.

“Yes to the second,” Harry finally answers. “But no to the first. I think.”

“I see that there’s some confusion there,” says Nick, and Harry frowns. Nick’s used a lot of big words over the last couple of minutes for someone who’s supposed to plastered. “Get off me, petal, I’ve got to take off my coat.”

“But you’re so comfortable,” argues Harry. 

“There’s a perfectly serviceable sofa right there,” says Nick, and Harry thinks he would flail his hands about in emphasis if Harry didn’t have them on lockdown. “C’mon, Harry.”

Nick’s not annoyed, not yet, and the truth is that Harry knows he can push this for a lot longer without him becoming so. But it _is_ taking energy that Harry doesn’t have to maintain such a vice like grip around him, and so Harry relaxes his hold. Nick takes that for the surrender that it is and wiggles himself loose.

It’s too much effort to keep standing up without Nick to cling onto, so Harry drops to the floor, which is a far shorter distance than the sofa. He can already feel his inebriation start to fade away, quickened by vampires’ lightning fast metabolism, but Harry doesn’t want to let go of his drunkenness quite yet.

He does let out a tiny, “oof,” though when he falls despite not feeling any pain, said more due to instinct forged so many years ago that has yet to erode away from him. 

“You all right there, superstar?” asks Nick, taking off his fancy coat and draping it all carefully over the arm of the couch. It’s a tiny couch, which is pretty fitting to the fact that it’s in a tiny room in a tiny flat. There’s more than enough space for them to squeeze into though when they want to watch The Bachelor on the telly situated on the wall opposite the sofa – feet resting on the coffee table in between – so it’s more than enough for Harry.

“Haven’t knocked a few more screws loose, have you?”

“Hope not,” says Harry, blinking. “Lost a few too many by now. Any more and it’ll be a disaster.”

“You’re already a disaster, Harold,” says Nick, and Harry scowls up at him, injured despite the truth of it. He’s rewarded with a follow up of, “A very pretty one, though.”

That’s slightly better. 

“You planning on lying there all night?” asks Nick from where he’s looming above Harry. His face is shadowed by the overhead lights, but Harry thinks he can make out the unmistakable sound of laughter in his voice.

“Yes, and you should come lie down beside me,” says Harry, lifting his arms to make grabby hands towards Nick. “Be my lying-down-on-the-rug buddy.”

“And say goodbye to the remnants of my dignity?”

Harry scoffs. 

“Look at yourself,” he says, waving his arm towards the general vicinity of Nick’s torso. “What dignity does a man wearing purple and blue button down with red sequins possibly have?”

Nick looks terribly affronted. 

“This is _your_ shirt,” he says, as though it’s a perfectly satisfactory argument.

“Exactly,” says Harry, nodding. “Come on, now. I’m getting lonely.”

Nick sighs, and Harry knows he’s won. 

“I want it on the record that I’m only doing this because my vision’s gone wobbly,” he says, lowering himself to the ground before stretching out his legs. He turns to his side so that he’s facing Harry, and Harry mirror’s his position so that their bended knees knock together. “And not because I’m pathetic when you make those eyes at me.”

Harry grins, a slow stretch of his lips. 

“Done,” he says, feeling warmth erupt from his chest and spread all the way to his toes. “Hi.”

Nick smiles back, the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkling with happiness. 

“Hi, superstar.”

Harry lowers his voice to a whisper when he continues. “I’ve decided that there weren’t any drugs in the beer, after all. Or the mojitos. Or the tequila shots.”

“No?” asks Nick, shuffling just a little bit closer. Harry likes how they’re curled together, like the two ends of quotation marks, holding together a delicate string of letters that coalesce into something – more. “From that unfinished list of drinks we had tonight, sounds like there was a lot of opportunity for a slip in.”

“No, no,” says Harry, shaking his head. “I think it was the model.”

Nick’s eyes spark with recognition. “You mean the last part of dinner?”

Harry’s throat feels dry just remembering it. Everything felt so heightened at on the dance floor, the lights and the music thumping through him, the blood of their last two humans flowing through him. It’s dangerous to drink from one just person, the risk of killing them too high, and Nick’s taught Harry well over the years on how to cover their tracks. 

He has also taught Harry how to pick the good ones, and Harry had zeroed in on the model within a second of his eyes landing on him. He was so pretty, and his prick had felt so good grinding up against Harry’s, and Nick finding similar fulfillment in the model’s arse. Better still had been meeting Nick’s eyes over the model’s head by the loo afterward, knowing that Harry had a grin on his face that matched the one on Nicks before they dove in to either side of the model’s neck, their fangs piercing the delicate barrier of his flesh.

Harry had thought that the blood tasted different, richer and somehow fouler than he expected, but still familiar. He had chalked it up to his own hormones, though, of being startlingly aware of the top of Nick’s quiff brushing against his neck, the feeling of Nick’s fingers tangled in his hair.

“Yeah,” breathes Harry. “He was perfect. And I think he shot up on liquid meth before we had him.”

“Hardcore party animal, that one,” says Nick with feeling. “But why’re we feeling drunk when meth’s supposed to be a – what d’you call it. An accelerant?” Nick pauses, mouth twisting in concentration. “No, that doesn’t sound right. A _stimulant_ , that’s it. Why is everything about you ten times slower than usual, Harold, when you should be flying higher than a kite? As should I, if we’re being thorough.”

“Dunno,” says Harry, going for a lazy shrug. “But I’m still feeling it.”

“I can’t believe in all our years of drinking blood from the most unsavoury of sorts, this is the first time we’ve come across a proper druggie.”

“Maybe he was just a recre– no, reco– maybe he just did it sometimes,” says Harry. “Looked far too good to have been done in by the stuff.”

“You seem awfully stuck on how fit he was,” Nick points out, but not in a way that indicates he minds. “Did you want him back here with us for the night? He seemed like the type of bloke who’d be up for a threeway.”

“He was quite fit,” says Harry with a sigh. “So fit. Pretty eyes and pretty lips and long – long, long legs. Model legs.”

“ _You’ve_ got model legs,” points out Nick, giving Harry’s foot a little nudge. “I’m offended by their very existence, let me tell you.”

Harry reaches for Nick’s wrists, feeling his dimple start to form on his cheek. 

“And you’ve got model hands,” says Harry, slotting their fingers together, Nick’s settling into the valleys between his knuckles. “Between the two of us, I’d say we’ve got it down. We don’t need another pesky model.”

“No we don’t,” agrees Nick. "Though they're very nice to have around every once in a while, just the same." Harry wants to kiss him, but he also doesn’t want to look away from his face, the most familiar and beloved sight to Harry for more than a century. It’s the kind of love that’s settled so deep into Harry’s bones that he thinks he’d be lost without it, unable to imagine a world where he feels anything less encompassing when he looks at Nick, expanding his chest and tingling his toes.

“Your face is all right too,” says Harry, taking in the crows’ feet that are an imprint of laughter and the freckles that are an imprint of Nick. “Handsome, I suppose some would call it, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Nick looks cross. 

“I’ll have you know that the painters of the Renaissance considered me worthy to be made into art,” he declares. 

Harry believes it. “That’s good for them. I can’t be held accountable for their taste.”

“You are a horrible, horrible child.” 

“You love me,” says Harry, and beams like the sun is shining from inside him when Nick doesn’t argue back and just looks defeated instead. Suddenly, it occurs to Harry to ask, “Hey, what would these Renaissance painters have to say about me?”

Nick rolls his eyes, but it’s fond. “Fishing for compliments, are we?”

Harry’s still warm and loose and feels the kind of contented security that only ever happens with Nick, and yet he feels every single ounce of his usual vulnerability when he says, “No, I’m just. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen how I look like. ‘m starting to forget, to be honest.”

It's strange, how every word that leaves him makes his heart feel even heavier in his chest. It hits Harry with startling clarity that even blindfolded he can describe Nick’s face down to the very last eyelash, but he can’t remember exactly how his eyes – which he knows are green but can’t quite recall the image of it – fits in with the rest of him, his ears, his jaw, his cheeks. Vampires don’t have reflections, and they don’t appear in any other imagery either. No videos, no photographs. 

The perils of being born in a time before cameras were something affordable by common people, thinks Harry, and also being born in a position too low to be able to hire someone to draw a likening of him. Of course, if he’s thinking about it clearly, Harry knows that even if he were able to afford it he wouldn’t have done anything with it. Why would he, without the knowledge that one day he’d look into a mirror and see nothing back in return? 

He could just go and pay a hundred quid to an art student in the nearby university to draw him, but. That’s not actually the point.

Harry doesn’t know if something changes in his face, but something surely does in Nick’s. 

“Oh, Harry,” he says softly.

Harry shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. 

“Never mind, I’m just being an odd duck. You know how I’m an odd duck when I’m drunk.” He sits up, the wool coat he never took off suddenly feeling stifling.

“Hey,” says Nick, when Harry finishes unbuttoning the coat and moves to stand. “Get back down here.”

“We should draw the curtains,” says Harry in response. “The sun’s gonna come up soon.”

Nick looks at him like he’s lost it. 

“It’s four in the morning in January,” he says slowly, then glances down at his watch just to make sure he’s right. As always, Harry’s charmed without his say so. “You can’t just get me settled on our horribly uncomfortable floor and then leave me here by my lonesome. That’s not right at all.”

Harry’s easy at the best of times, and he’s nothing if not helpless in the face of Nick reaching for his wrist and tugging him back down. “There we are. Now, are you having a tiff over your distressingly average face?”

“Hey,” says Harry, unable to bring himself to be really upset. “That’s not nice.”

“Oh, now it’s considered being mean when one simply tells the truth?” 

“You’re saying it to make fun of me.”

“About ninety-percent of the things I say are to make fun of you, Harold, you should’ve stopped being surprised ages ago.”

Harry punches Nick on the shoulder in response, partly because he deserves it, but mostly because Harry doesn’t know what to say. 

“Ow!” complains Nick, reaching to rub at the offended spot. “That’s physical abuse. I could get you arrested for that.”

“Shut up,” says Harry. “You had that coming.”

“I confirm nothing,” says Nick. Then thoughtfully, he continues, “But if it’ll lift your spirits I suppose I can go about describing it to you.”

Harry frowns. “Describe what?”

“Your face, little turtle,” says Nick. 

“Oh,” says Harry, feeling warm all over again in a way that has very little to do with the fresh blood in his veins and the unbuttoned coat he’s still got on. “You’d do that?”

“It’s definitely no hardship for me,” replies Nick. “I’ve been meaning to put my vocabulary to good use.”

“I’m glad you’ll be getting something out of it,” says Harry dryly, but the sound that escapes his throat a moment later is definitely a giggle. “All right, then, let’s have it.”

He feels some strange anticipation build around his navel as Nick’s eyes rove over his face, seemingly tracing every cut and contour. Nick’s biting his lower lip, his upper one appearing fuller in turn, and Harry resists the urge to kiss him again. 

Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to do.

“Well, for a start, your eyes are average sized and the average space apart,” Nick begins, and Harry kicks him on the shin. “And your nose,” continues Nick, placing his thumb on the tip of Harry’s nose and his forefinger on curve between his eyes. He squints a little, considering, before he slowly edges his curled fingers back and says, “You nose is about yay big.”

“Oh, come on,” laughs Harry. “This is the most bullshit description of my face I’m ever going to get.”

“Not impressed by my strong opening, Harold?”

“Not in the least.” 

“That won’t do at all,” says Nick. “Maybe it’s because we’re flopped on the ground like a pair of particularly lazy caterpillars. The angle is interfering with my visuals.”

“Let’s sit up, then?”

They both shuffle about until they’re sitting in the tiny amount of floor space available in the drawing room, cross legged and knees still knocking into each other. 

“No bloody room in this place,” mutters Nick, using his back to push the coffee table further towards the television. Harry’s lucky to have his back facing the sofa, placed to provide perfect support for his back. 

“It’s what we can afford with our monthly investment income,” says Harry, far too used to this line of argument. 

“Maybe if we weren’t committed to donate monthly to five thousand different charities–”

Harry slaps a hand over Nick’s mouth. “We’re not having that conversation now! We’re talking about me and my averagely spaced eyes and yay big nose, remember?”

“How could I forget?” grumbles Nick, and Harry shushes him. “All right, all right. Where were we?”

“You were about to start talking about my face,” supplies Harry. “And seriously, this time.”

In response, Nick purses his lips and stares at Harry again, gaze intent. It’s not sexual, but it’s unnerving just the same, causing that same wretched twist in his stomach.

“All right,” says Nick, and Harry closes his eyes to listen. He doesn’t feel nearly as drunk anymore, overtaken by something else entirely. “You’ve got a big forehead, and your hairline makes a widow’s peak when you’ve got it pushed back. There’s always colour on your face, and it’s the same as the skin on the inside of your elbow. You’ve also got a distressingly chiseled jaw. The lines make a proper obtuse angle. I’m certain that you could teach maths with its dimensions.”

He pauses a little before continuing. “You’ve also always got red on your cheeks, even when you’ve not fed in days but especially now, right up there on the apples of it. You’ve got a big nose and little ears–”

“Wait,” interrupts Harry, reeling from all the words and how they sound tumbling out of Nick’s mouth. The air in the room feels oppressive. “How can I have a big nose but small ears? I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be the same size.”

“I dunno,” says Nick, shrugging. “They just are. Maybe it’s ‘cause your hair’s always hiding it. Or actually, I reckon your nose is just – wide. Yep, that’s it. You’ve got a big, wide nose. Looks a bit like a cock, if I’m being perfectly honest.

Harry stares at him, suddenly feeling a lot less overwhelmed.

“Are you saying I look like I’ve got a miniature prick on my face?” When Nick just grins, a flash of his elongated canines visible above his lower lip, Harry sighs and says, “Well, at least it’s big and wide like my actual–”

“Do not finish that sentence Harry.”

Harry sticks his tongue out at him. Suddenly, it’s easy to breathe again. 

“You’ve got a moon crater of a dimple on that cheek when you laugh,” says Nick. When Harry instinctively smiles, he delightedly says, “There it is! A baby animal could make itself a comfortable home there.”

“ _Nick._ ”

“And your eyes are green,” continues Nick, happily ignoring Harry’s protest. “Green like the glass you find by the sea. Very pretty, they are. There are darker flecks in there too, but I might just be making that up. And your eyebrows are heavy, close to your eyes. They’ve got some personality in them, always moving about with your whims.

“And your mouth,” says Nick, reaching to touch it in way that Harry suspects signals that he did not mean to move his hand at all. Harry finds himself becoming still, hyperaware of the tips of Nick’s fingers grazing his lips. “You’ve got a bee-stung mouth and your lips make an alarmingly perfect bow. The fashion industry could make a fortune making a make-up line with the colours of your face.”

Harry feels his cheeks heat, even as Nick removes his hand just as absently as he had placed it. “Now that’s just pandering,” he says, even though it pleases him to hear it. It pleases Harry to hear _all_ of it.

Nick looks pained as he replies, “Believe me when I say my life would be much simpler if that were true, petal. Also, your teeth are suspiciously straight for having been born in the mid to late nineteenth century.”

Harry runs his tongue along his upper teeth reflexively, the edge of it catching on his fangs, and doesn’t miss how Nick’s eyes follow the twist and pucker of his mouth. 

“Good genes? I guess?” says Harry, finally, shrugging. 

“Very good genes,” agrees Nick. And the pause that follows makes Harry think that this is it, the end of their little activity, but then Nick slowly says, “And everything about your face is too big.”

Surprised, Harry furrows his eyebrows, the ones that apparently tell a story. “Okay?”

“No,” says Nick, gaze moving from Harry’s to his mouth so his cheeks on the opposite sides of his face. There’s something acutely observant in his scrutiny, makes Harry suddenly aware of every hair standing on his body. He feels so alert he can't imagine just moments earlier his mind was hazy with intoxication. “All of it. Your eyes and lips and nose – they’re too big for your face. Bit like an alien, really.”

“Um, okay,” repeats Harry, unsure of any other appropriate response. “Unlike your beginning, that was a strong, if unexpected, ending.”

“I’m not done yet, ET,” says Nick. “Everything I said is as spot-on as I can make it, but all you really need to know is that it all comes together to make something quite lovely.”

Harry’s hands, which had been resting on his knees, tighten around the joint. He doesn’t know if others are capable of feeling this overwhelming softness towards someone, but Harry knows for certain that he has never felt anything even close to this for anyone else, doesn’t know if he’s capable of it in the future.

“You know,” he says, voice rougher than he expected, “I really wasn’t looking for compliments. I just wanted to try and remember how I looked like to other people.”

“Well, then,” says Nick blithely, as though he hadn't just left Harry feeling so cared for it made his throat feel dry, scratchy. “We’ll just sell one of our many artifacts with a high dollar value and hire an artist whose shoulders I’ll loom over to make sure they get you right.”

“No need for that,” says Harry, smiling. “I think you did a pretty good job describing my average, alien face with its huge dick nose, to be honest.”

“People have always been telling me that I’ve got a way with words.”

“If continuing to pawn priceless artifacts ends up failing us,” says Harry, “we should look into getting a radio gig.”

“We?”

Harry doesn’t know how he feels about Nick’s tone. “C’mon,” he says, wiggling a little in his spot in excitement. “Let me do your face.”

“You know how I feel about sex outside the bedroom, Harry.”

Sometimes, Harry thinks that he’d be perfectly happy listening to Nick talk forever (no hyperbole). There are other times though when Nick is being purposefully obtuse and difficult, and Harry gets annoyed enough to want Nick to never talk again.

“First of all,” says Harry, “I _do_ know how you feel about that, so I don’t think you’re making the point that you want to. And second of all, you know that I meant let me tell you how you look.”

“Of course I knew what you were talking about,” says Nick, long-suffering. “I’m not as slow as you, baby turtle, I just don’t much care to hear about my face.”

Harry leans back a bit, surprised. “How could you not?” he asks curiously.

Nick shrugs. “What difference does it make?”

“It’s how you look like,” says Harry, unable to believe that Nick has to have this explained to him. “It’s like, a part of your identity. How do you picture yourself doing things or like – see yourself in the future or whatever?”

“Don’t think about it much, to be perfectly honest,” says Nick, but Harry knows that’s bullshit. “After a certain point, you stop thinking about that stuff and take it one day at a time.”

“You’re lying.”

Nick looks annoyed. “I’m not.”

“You are, you have a tell,” says Harry, and he does. When it comes to the things that matter, there’s no clearer sign to Harry that Nick’s spewing out nonsense than when his face goes distant with sadness even when his tone is light and airy.

“No I don’t.”

“You do,” says Harry immediately. “And no, I’m not gonna tell you what it is.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” says Nick, and he’s definitely whining, but there’s an edge of anxiousness in his eyes, too. Like he isn’t sure how he feels about where the conversation is going.

“Bully for you, then,” responds Harry, resolute. “You’re the one being dodgy about something that’s apparently not a big deal.”

Nick sighs, looking away from Harry’s face to a spot above his shoulder. Harry thinks he’s focusing on the painting hanging over the sofa, Nick’s favourite, of Manhattan’s skyline in the dead of night. It’s not just Nick’s favourite painting so much as it is his most favourite possession of all the ridiculous things they’ve got littered around the room, some priceless, some not.

“I'm really not making it up about not caring to know how I look like,” he says, and this time Harry doesn’t interrupt because the cadence of Nick’s voice is consistent with the look that’s on his voice.

“And I’m not worried about trying to remember my face, superstar,” says Nick quietly, “because I’m much more occupied trying never to forget yours.”

Harry feels all his muscles freeze, even the tiny ones that are probably responsible for his blinking. 

Nick is still looking at the painting. “That’s how I see myself doing things, how I imagine the future.”

The, ‘ _with you_ ,’ is left unspoken, heavy in the space between them. And that’s just.

Harry has to squeeze his eyes shut in an effort to stop himself from doing something that’ll have Nick mocking him for the next three decades. 

“Not that I come up with anything particularly special, mind you,” continues Nick, voice suddenly chipper. “We’ve basically exhausted all the fun available on every corner of this planet. I suppose our options now are to either go to Antarctica or the Canadian prairies or visit some place we haven’t been in a while. I’d say Argentina, but we’ll be going there for the football tournament soon enough–”

“Stop,” interrupts Harry, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He’s trying to take deep breaths but it’s not doing anything to temper the expansion of the crippling tenderness that’s taking up all the space in his body, squeezing and crushing his organs. 

“I know you’ve met me only very recently, Harold, but soon enough you’ll learn that sometimes when I get talking I actually physically can’t stop–”

There’s one guaranteed way of making shut up. Harry thinks this is the right time to give in to his ever present need to kiss Nick, and so he does, grasps him by the front of his (Harry’s) truly awful shirt and pulling him in, smashing their mouths together.

Everything about kissing Nick is warm, familiar, even the desperation that Harry feels rising as he bites down on Nick’s lips. Nick hisses as a little as the corner of his mouth is nicked by Harry’s fangs, but that doesn’t stop him from slipping his tongue inside Harry’s mouth and running it thoroughly into the deep crevices.

He’s going slowly, something soft in how he works at Harry’s lips, but Harry’s too keyed up for that to be enough. 

“No,” he says roughly, gripping Nick’s arms too hard and pushing with his tongue and teeth until Nick makes a frustrated noise and starts to push back, harsh.

Harry gets so distracted by it that he ends up getting the edge of his tongue nipped by the sharp points of Nick’s canines. Nick licks it up before Harry can even wince, though, one hand on Harry’s jaw to hold him in place. The other is tangled into Harry’s hair, and it stings when he tugs at it, Harry’s head unable to move in the direction of the pull.

Harry loves it though, moans into it and grips onto Nick’s shoulders. He tries to pull him closer still and gasps when Nick moves away instead. He tries to follow the path of his mouth, but Nick only uses the moment to push back the hair that has fallen on Harry’s forehead, twisting his fingers into the limp curls before diving back in. Harry loses himself in the taste of margaritas and the metallic traces of iron still clinging to the walls of his mouth, the inside of Nick’s cheeks. He feels drugged up all over again, on Nick's taste and words and all of his being.

He’s not sure how long they kiss, exactly. They move about some and it ends with Nick’s knees digging into Harry’s lap, the only discernible sounds being their harsh breathing through their noses, the spit slick slides of their lips. At one point Nick removes his hands to push the wool coat off of Harry’s shoulders and pull out Harry’s arms. Harry takes the hint and tugs Nick’s shirt out of his trousers, starts to unbutton everything within his reach but only manages success with two, fingers fumbling too much. 

They separate their mouths so that Nick can yank off Harry’s shirt. Harry hadn’t realized how hot he was feeling until the cool air hits his body, soothing. 

When Nick goes back in, though, he doesn’t go for Harry’s mouth. He grazes his teeth along the sharp cut of Harry’s jaw in between small kisses, nipping softly at the skin. He moves down the line to his chin, and when he starts to move lower, Harry drops his head back to give Nick better access to his neck.

“I don’t know if I say this enough,” says Harry, chest tight with more than just the exertion, the heavy air in the room. His breaths are coming in shallow, and he closes his eyes to the feeling of Nick biting a bruise at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “But I’m glad – I’m so glad it was you. That found me.”

Nick pauses only to mutter, “Now’s not the time, Harry,” and puts just enough pressure with his fangs to pierce Harry’s skin.

“But it is,” says Harry, feeling the small trickle of stolen blood seep out of his neck. Nick licks it up, and Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head in pleasure as some of Nick’s endorphin laden saliva enters his bloodstream. “I love you.”

“Stop it,” scolds Nick, lifting his head to glare at Harry. His mouth is stained red, his big brown eyes blown wide.

“I don’t want–”

This time its Nick who cuts Harry off by kissing him, and it’s so reminiscent of the first time they did so that it makes Harry clutch at Nick’s elbows, nails digging into his skin. It was in Chicago during the late twenties, at the dead of night in the peak of summer. The two of them had fed off of the entertainment at the speakeasy, Harry going for the stunning blonde singer with her hoarse, smoky voice, while Nick had the pianist who accompanied her. 

She had been delightful, her smooth fingernails scratching at his scalp as he drank from her delicate wrists. It had been with regret that Harry had to look into her eyes and ask her to forget, watch her heavy-lidded eyes grow hazy as she did so. 

“Can we go to a show tomorrow?” he’d asked Nick, leaning into his side. “Something with lots of dancers. Lots of colours and light and people.”

Nick hadn’t had the chance to answer before they had run into a pair of laughing girls, shoes in their hands and the metal in their bangles clinking together happily. 

“Oh, sorry!” said one of them, but Harry’s eyes had fallen on the other one, the one who gives them an apologetic smile. She had sweet, warm eyes and her dark hair was twisted into a big knot, a thin chain of golden leaves resting around the circumference of her head.

She looked a spitting image of Gemma at twenty-one, and it made Harry feel like he’d just been staked through the heart. It made him stumble back and Nick hurried him away to an alley before Harry kicked into a full blown panic attack, his temples breaking out into a sweat and his breaths coming in shallow along with the heaves of his chest.

It had been the first and only time that Harry had had a breakdown like that since he was first turned. Nick had been there to witness that as well, but that particular incident hadn’t resulted in an overwhelming buzzing in Harry’s head, a cacophony of, no more mum or Gemma or Ed or NiallZaynLouisLiam–

He didn’t realize he had been saying all this out loud, his words stuck in an eerie loop. Not until Nick had tangled their fingers together, gripping him painfully.

“You’ve got me,” Nick had said firmly.

“But–”

Nick cut him off, his mouth fierce and hot against Harry’s. 

“You have me,” he repeated, "in every way that matters." And so many years later, it still doesn’t fail to make Harry’s chest expand with warmth that the statement still holds true.

Harry wasn’t turned by Nick, but he looks to Nick as his sire all the same. Sires are supposed to look after their newly turned vampires, teach them how to survive in a world that’s suddenly too bright and too loud and too clear. Nick found him just days after he was turned, hiding in the back of a dark farmhouse in the afternoon, starved and confused and hissing at the sunlight that fell through the cracks on the roof. 

And somehow Nick’s stayed with him since then, Harry’s one constant in a world that was anything but. Time just makes Nick even more precious to his eyes, and as Harry learns and grows and discovers that he needs Nick less and less to survive, Harry finds out that he simply _wants_ Nick more and more. He wants Nick’s laughter and banter and the way he touches the inside of Harry’s wrist to get his attention, wants how in the cold reality of death Nick never fails to make him feel like he’s burning with life. 

Harry feels nothing but alive right now, as Nick’s hand makes quick work of his belt and the button of his jeans, slipping his hand into Harry’s pants and curling his fingers around his prick. Their chests are pressed together, Nick’s head resting on Harry’s shoulder as Harry grinds into his palm, wincing the pleasure overwhelming the burn of it.

“Oh, God,” he says as Nick’s thumbnail grazes over the slit at the tip of Harry’s hardening cock. “Nick–”

“Good?” asks Nick, voice rough. “Better than talking?”

“Yes, it’s – it’s so good,” breathes Harry. “Could be better with some – some proper slicking up, though.”

“You want me to get the lube?”

“I want you to fuck me, is what I want you to do,” says Harry, squeezing at Nick atop his trousers. He feels himself ache with how much he wants Nick inside him, to spread him open and take and take so thoroughly that even if this is the last time they have sex, Nick remembers it vividly for the next millennia. “And I want you to tell me everything about me that you’re never gonna forget, so you don’t end up forgetting yourself.”

“Christ,” mutters Nick, and Harry doesn’t see why _he_ should look so wrecked. “ _Harry._ ”

“Go and get the stuff,” says Harry, pushing Nick off impatiently. Nick huffs a little exasperatedly as he scrambles to his feet – though it does nothing to flag the tent in his trousers – and Harry follows him up immediately after. Harry tugs off his jeans, yanking at them when they catch a little on his ankles.

Nick’s already got the bottle of lube they’d secreted away in the cabinet under the telly, one of the many places around their tiny flat. It had become a necessity for years now, given their complete lack of boundaries and etiquette around each other, which only heightened when in the security of their own home.

“C’mon, c’mon,” says Harry, pulling off his socks and then his pants, feeling hot under Nick’s gaze. “I know it’s hot when you’re all dressed and I’m not because there’s that whole power imbalance thing, but hurry it up, please.”

“So polite even when you’re bossy,” says Nick, but it comes out less teasing and more turned on, his eyes following where Harry’s flush spreads from his cheeks to the top of his chest. He sets the bottle down on the coffee table, though, and unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt before pulling it over his head. Harry thinks the only way to speed things up is to help Nick out, and so he gets on his knees and pulls Nick’s pants and trousers down in on go, letting the fabric pool around Nick’s ankles.

And because he’s in the perfect position to do so, Harry places his hands on Nick’s hips and starts sucking his dick. He forgoes any teasing, just flattens his tongue and lets Nick slide right in, hollowing his cheeks and retracting his fangs to avoid any accidents. 

“Fuck,” curses Nick, and when Harry looks up through his eyelashes, he sees Nick staring down at him, mouth parted and flattened quiff falling on a fringe across his forehead. Nick groans when Harry takes him in deeper and moves a hand so that his forefinger is pressing against the soft skin of Nick’s bollocks. It makes Nick’s knees shake, makes him dig his fingers into Harry’s hair. 

It also makes him hoarsely say, “Your mouth. How hot it feels around my cock, how easily it goes down your throat because you want it to.”

Harry’s taken by surprise. He loves hearing Nick speak during sex, but this doesn’t seem like he’s talking dirty, and the fact that it’s making Harry’s prick stiffer seems to be almost incidental. Nick’s words are too clear even as his voice is breaking, like he wants to hear himself say it just as much as he wants Harry to hear it. 

Harry pulls back a bit to focus on the head of Nick’s cock, tonguing at the opening, and that has Nick’s breaths get shallower and continue, “How you know exactly what to do with that tongue, Christ, I don’t think anyone who’s had you could ever forget.”

With a jolt, Harry realizes that Nick’s talking about the things he wants to remember. 

And that’s just so Nick that Harry ends up moaning around his full mouth, feels his skin get wet with a particularly large discharge of precum against his stomach. Nick really would do anything for him, and it makes arousal and something much softer expand in Harry in equal turns, makes him suck harder and fiercer.

He pulls back a little to focus on the head, the tip of his tongue slipping into the slit. One of his hands comes up to cover the rest of Nick's cock, pumping it, and it's only when Nick starts to thrust into his mouth that Harry lets go, just relaxes his jaw and lets him do it.

“Stop - stop it, you minx, I’m gonna come,” says Nick, pulling Harry’s head back with a plop. Nick’s cock springs back from Harry’s mouth, and Harry blinks, not having expected that. “Don’t forget I haven’t fucked you yet, superstar. Don't want to finish before I get the chance to do that.”

“Oh,” says Harry, because yeah. “You better get on that, then.” 

As a response, Nick just pushes at Harry’s shoulders. Harry takes the hint and unfolds his legs from beneath him so he can lie down on his back, his skin prickling from the rug. He bends them back up again when he’s settled, feet flat on the ground, and Nick shoulders his way into the space between them. His fingers are dripping with lubricant, though his cock is not.

He traces around Harry’s rim with what feels like Nick's pinkie, and the coldness of the lube makes Harry shiver. He nudges inside him soon enough though, just the one finger going through

“I’m also never going to get over how every time I open you up, it feels like the first,” says Nick, eyes trained down presumably to see himself fucking into Harry. “All the shit that comes from this vampire business, having your arse stay so unbelievably tight is definitely a deserved reward.”

“I’m gonna take this to mean that thinking of me being a virgin turns you on,” says Harry, gasping a little as Nick slowly adds another finger. He’s also playing absently with Harry’s balls, gently pressing and rubbing the sac. “And not – ah – not that my arse is a consolation prize for not being able to go out in the sun.”

“Trust me, petal, this arse isn’t anyone’s consolation prize.” Nick crooks his fingers just so that they brush up against his prostrate, sends a jolt down his nervous system that ends with Harry’s neck stretching back and his toes curling in, his hips lifting just so.

“Then take it like you want it, please,” Harry grits out, starting to thrust into Nick’s hand as he adds a third finger. It makes Harry’s bottom sting harshly from the friction against the rug. 

Nick withdraws his hand from Harry, and even though this is really the first step to what Harry wanted, he can’t help but whine a little, suddenly feeling loose and empty, cold without the heat of Nick’s body. 

Harry starts to stroke his prick while he waits for Nick to slick up his own. He closes his eyes, imagines Nick saying, _a hundred years from now I’m gonna remember your face, how you look when you touch yourself_. It makes Harry restless, desperate with want for Nick. Impatient, he folds his legs closer to his body, stretches his free arm to reach down to his entrance and starts fucking himself. 

“Oh, God,” he groans, the soft, wet walls inside him clinging hotly to his two fingers, his nerves set alight. He twists and shifts as much as he can until he finds the right angle, and even as he feels pleasure spark up with each thrust, he feels the strain in his tendons, from his shoulder all the way down to the wrist that’s pressed up against the curve of his arse.

“Bloody hell,” he hears Nick say. When Harry blinks up at him, he sees that he looks exactly as winded as his voice sounds. 

“What?” asks Harry. “You ready?”

“Ready to have a sit down and wank myself off, yes,” says Nick, and he’s in fact started to do so, eyes trained on Harry’s fingers disappearing inside himself. “Looks like you’re doing a better job at taking care of yourself then I ever could. Knew I called you superstar for a reason.”

There _is_ a reason, and Harry’s supposed sexual prowess isn’t it. 

“Just come here and fuck me,” says Harry, breathless. “Or I could come over and ride you if that’s what you want but – I need you to put your cock inside me, all right? No messing around, I mean it–”

“Don’t tie yourself into a knot, Harry, not if it’s not in a sexy way,” says Nick, and Harry doesn’t know how he does it, keep up this level of banter when Harry feels like his vocabulary has devolved to what he knew when he was eight. And for perspective, it’s important to remember that it was 1902 when Harry was eight, a simple farmer’s son.

But Nick surges forward, drops himself to his knees and Harry spreads his legs apart to let him in. He pulls Harry’s hands away from his arse and cock but holds on to his wrists, pressing them on the ground above Harry’s head. Really, only Nick with his long torso and arms could do something like this, and Harry feels his prick get harder than ever at the sight of Nick bent over him, holding him in place. 

Nick leans down to kiss him before pulling back and positioning himself by Harry’s opening. 

“I’m going to take you like I want you,” says Nick softly, “like my insides are twisting with it. I’m going to take you like I’m mad with how much I want you, making me forget that you’re supposed to be careful with the things you want that much.”

Harry’s heart rate has reached a point where he would fear an impending heart attack if he wasn’t already so secure in his knowledge of being dead. He doesn’t feel dead, though – he thinks he feels more awake and alive than anyone else on the planet as Nick enters him, sliding slowly through the tight ring of muscles. They only ever use condoms when they invite back humans for a night with them – for their benefit and peace of mind, since Harry not Nick can catch or spread diseases, nor get anyone pregnant – and right now that doesn’t make much difference, the slippery coolness of the lubricant feeling just the same.

Nick doesn’t stop until he’s buried inside Harry, pressed up against Harry’s bottom. 

“Fuck,” breathes Harry, reveling in the burn of it. He feels like he’s going to split in two, just like always, Nick’s girth pushing at the edges of him. 

“Yeah,” agrees Nick, chest heaving in shallow bursts. 

“Not gonna forget this, though, right?”

Nick laughs a little, the sound catching in his throat. “Not a chance, superstar,” he says, and begins to fuck into Harry in earnest. 

Every time Nick slams into him, Harry feels the breath being knocked out of his chest. He wants to touch his dick – or have Nick touch it, he’s not that picky – but all the available hands between the two of them are occupied and Harry cries out, in a mixture of growing pleasure and frustration. 

“You’re not – not making the right noise,” says Nick, and he lets go of Harry’s wrists to reach for his calves instead, sliding his hands under one of Harry’s knees and lifting his leg so that it hangs over Nick’s shoulder. 

It allows Nick to adjust his angle, and with it he starts hitting Harry’s prostrate with every thrust. Harry starts cursing, the chemicals that are igniting in his body overwhelming his ability to do anything but repeat, “fuck” and “Nick” and “oh” in equal frequency. 

“How – how your face twists when you say my name,” starts Nick, and Harry positively keens, unable to handle the effect of the words when his body already feels like bursting from the physical stimulation. 

“Nick–”

“How you’re biting your mouth even redder still,” continues Nick, voice breaking between syllables. He goes on as though he hadn’t heard Harry, and his glazed expression only serves to evidence that. “How you tighten up every time I pull out a bit, the way the sweat is falling past your temples, how your eyes are mostly black and I can’t see myself reflected on them–”

Harry squeezes those very eyes shut, wrapping one of his now free hands around his neglected cock, stiff and leaking on his stomach. He starts to wank it in the odd rhythm that’s fallen over them, Nick’s words and thrusts somehow harmonious with each other.

Everything about the room works in tandem to push Harry further, from Nick’s words between their harsh breaths, the slap of skin against skin, the burn against his back from every snap of Nick’s hips. He hadn’t stopped once since he started, and Harry’s pumps get more erratic near the same time Nick’s thrusts do. 

“I’m going – I’m going to remember this,” says Nick, and Harry knows that they’re both about to be pushed over the edge. “And how the first time we fucked I thought I was never going to feel anything like that again, but somehow – somehow I do, somehow it keeps getting better, and tonight's the best of them all so far.”

And that's it, that’s what was needed, and Harry feels himself shoot out all over his stomach in thick, hot bursts, and Nick follows a few moments later. Nothing gets to Harry’s prick – or Harry heart, really – than the desperate tenderness that laces Nick’s voice when he talks about him. 

They’re still looking at each other as they come down from it, Nick’s hands trembling as they rest on Harry’s thighs. He pulls out his softening cock from inside Harry, some of his spunk sliding out with it. Harry follows Nick’s movements as he crawls up to the space beside him and collapses there. Harry curls towards him, facing each other in the way that they were when Nick had started to describe his face, except with lesser clothes and space between them. 

“Thank you,” says Harry quietly, smile pulling at his mouth as it always does when facing Nick. It’s cool in the room, colder still where the cum’s drying on his stomach and pooling out of his arse, but Harry’s not bothered by it just yet. 

“Same to you, superstar,” responds Nick, still a little breathless. He laughs through it though, his expression light. “Job exceptionally well done on all accounts, I say. Except we’re going to need to replace the rug in here, which is a bit of an annoyance.”

“I’ve missed having one of our furniture buying trips, to be honest.”

“Something to do Monday night, then.”

“It’ll be something to remember,” says Harry, grinning, and his heart chest tightens at the way Nick’s smile grows softer at the edges. 

“It shall,” he agrees. “And how are you feeling about your failing memory of your perfectly average face?”

Harry kicks at him, but it’s gentle. 

“Better things to worry about, is how I’m feeling about it now,” he replies. He pauses, making sure to look directly into Nick’s eyes as he continues, “Thinking there’s a better way to go about it than what I was used to.”

“Yeah?”

Harry nods. “The same way you’ve been doing it, I think.” 

He might be feeling fucked out and content, mind at peace with it, but that doesn't mean he can't think back to what he was saying before with clarity. There really are better ways to try and imagine a future through, to remember a past with, Harry thinks, and Nick’s face is the one he wants to remember long after he’s fully lost all memories of his own. Not just his face, but also his hands and feet, his slender legs. Harry thinks he’s going to start counting his blessings through each part of Nick he sees, instead of each part of himself that he does not.

“I think we should still get a picture though,” he says, pointing at the empty space on the wall above the television set. “Help out a talented and broke artist in exchange for a sketch of us. Charcoal, I’m thinking.”

Nick looks at him incredulously

“Are you mad?” he demands. “Are you still spiked from that model’s blood? We’re not going to put up a painting of ourselves in our own home.”

Harry bursts into loud, hysterical laughter. 

“You’re taking the piss,” realizes Nick, sounding more annoyed at himself than Harry. “You’re getting too sly for your own good.”

“Learned from the best,” says Harry, smiling as brightly as he can and feeling elated when the blatantly plastered charm still manages to work on Nick. “But seriously, now that I’ve thought about it–”

“ _No._ ”

Harry ignores him. “Not a painting, Nicholas, but something small, I was thinking. Maybe the size of a photo, or something we can put away in a book.”

Nick considers this, and in that time Harry starts to rub his foot against Nick’s ankle.

“Well, that sounds all right,” he allows.

Harry beams, and a week later they’ve got the drawing done, the size of a standard paper and sketched with ordinary pencil and somehow phenomenal. The likeness is incredibly striking, and Harry thinks it’s a good start to their own, slightly-warped supernatural version of a photo album.


End file.
